


eat your ego

by kiiouex



Series: Pynch Week 2017 [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: An Appalling Lack of Adult Supervision, Explosives Detonated, M/M, Substances Consumed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 14:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11693919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: The trunk of the BMW and the Mitsu are both loaded. It’s a surprising amount of tenacity from Kavinsky; Ronan’s attention span always falters first. But Kavinsky never just wants a party, he wants aspectacle.AU where Ronan fell in with Kavinsky instead of Gansey and has been doing Poorly since his father's death.





	eat your ego

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt 'Stars'. I think I've been meaning to write something like this for a while, but maybe in a different week I would have swapped Gansey out for Adam hehe
> 
> Extra super-duper thanks to the indefatigable [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) who had to wait for me to finish this one and then Speed Read so it could go out on time

Henrietta in the early afternoon is not more charming than at any other hour; if anything, the natives look more hostile to two Aglionby boys loitering out of bounds. That’s part of the appeal though. Ronan sits on the roof of the Mitsu, feet on the windshield, and watches the populace grumble past. Occasionally, Kavinsky throws skittles in the general direction of his mouth, and occasionally Ronan actually attempts to catch them.

“Your hookup’s fucking late,” Ronan complains, feeling the itch of sunburn setting into his skin. “And we’ve still got shit to get. Cups and ice and all that crap.”

“I’m fucking sorry, I didn’t realise you were such a diligent hostess,” Kavinsky replies amiably. He flings another handful of skittles at Ronan, not caring that half of it sticks to the hood of his car, candy-bright and ridiculous. He seems to have bought the bag just to have something to throw; Kavinsky’s relationship with food is amicable but profoundly distant. “Go make it all yourself if you’re so bored.”

“Tapped out,” Ronan replies. He always feels low when the dream place is low. The fact that he’s been feeling low the rest of the time is coincidental.

Kavinsky scoffs, a wonderful sound littered with contempt and consonants. “Well don’t fret babe, I’ll take you to Walmart when we’re done.”

Ronan doesn’t have the energy to bristle at the pet name. He learned five months ago that there is no way to explain that he’s not anyone’s _babe_ that won’t make Kavinsky try harder.

Kavinsky’s guy is late, and wants a soda before he’ll talk business, a request Kavinsky only indulges because it makes Ronan snarl, a real feral show of teeth. It freaks out the guy; to Kavinsky, as with everything else Ronan does, it is some horrendous act of foreplay. But they get the shit.

They go to Walmart.

 

Henrietta’s Walmart is the kind of place that makes Ronan sad, somewhere very deep inside. The shelves have never once been fully stocked, the CD section is expansive and dusty, there is something sticky in every aisle and not nearly enough teenaged employees to spare one for cleanup.

School’s out by the time Ronan and Kavinsky start skulking around, mostly bored locals but a couple of Aglionby boys who pick through DVD bargain bins like wayward colonials. Everyone knows who Kavinsky is, urban legend, local devil, unmissable with those shades and that swagger and the furious shadow of Ronan Lynch always at his side.

It’s only the local kids who dare to approach publicly, to say ‘hey’ and ‘party tonight?’ and ‘can I get just a taste of something for cheap?’ Kavinsky says, “Fuck you,” to all three of them, but he says it for Ronan, who is already moving away.

He hates how many people think they’re worth talking to, and he hates everyone who approaches when there’s nothing left he can do to make himself unapproachable short of a full-face tattoo. As with all things, he hates it silently. The only outwards expression he allows himself is crushing a wayward piece of plastic under his heel, savoring the brittle crunch.

Ronan is unfortunately recognizable by his tattoo, which he’s had extended a couple of times, up the back of his neck and further around his shoulders. It still feels restrained, especially since Kavinsky went in to get ‘fast lane’ on his knuckles right after. Declan made noises about ‘future’ and ‘regret’, but Ronan thinks that ship sailed half a year ago from a burning port.

They sweep half a shelf of plastic cups into a shopping cart, a few dozen bags of salty garbage ‘for people who are weak enough to eat’, and three jugs of gasoline, because ‘you can never have too much’. It’s enough to lift Ronan’s spirits, watching Kavinsky pick out backup bottles of lighter fluid; it may have been a rough day, or week, or six fucking months, but tonight he is going to make something burn. If unchecked pyromania can’t ease his soul, nothing can.

“Hey,” Kavinsky says, sudden and amused, “Look who’s slumming it.”

Ronan follows his gaze across the aisle and finds Dick Gansey. Ronan knows him as the person who’s in charge of too many things and on the cover of too many student magazines, supposedly for his academic merits but probably just for his jawline. Or his hair. Biceps. There is a lot about Dick Gansey that looks good on a magazine cover, and Ronan has noticed all of it.

He’s there with a friend and an armful of something electric and complicated. Kavinsky bounces a matchbook off his head good-naturedly; Ronan watches Gansey’s nostrils flare, but he squares his shoulders and keeps walking, convincingly immune to insult. The boy with him doesn’t ignore it, though, and he glares at them both with bristling pride.

It should be a struggle for Ronan to remember who Adam Parrish is, because Adam Parrish is no one, is some scholarship pity-kid who keeps his head down and works hard and does fuck-all of interest to Ronan and his friends. It should be hard to even see Adam when he’s forever trailing in the wake of Gansey’s gilded footsteps.

But Ronan knows him, because Ronan can’t help knowing him, can’t help staring at him every time they cross paths. Adam is hungry and focused and magnificent, is handsome in some bizarre rural cryptid kind of way, gets his hands dirty and cares about things that are real, and gives an actual fuck. Ronan can tell that Adam is desperately, jealously in love with Gansey. Ronan is not sure how not to fall into that trap himself.

Adam’s glare is angled at an impervious Kavinsky, but a little piece of Ronan withers all the same. He’s not familiar enough with shame to feel it, but a sad sort of longing punctures him in its place. Adam’s disdain matters in a way Declan’s high-handed scorn doesn’t, possibly because Ronan wants very badly to impress him, possibly because Ronan knows that he’s failing.  

Gansey and Adam move on. Kavinsky chucks a bunch of cheap electronics in the cart, things that look fun to detonate, a pile of off-brand Tamagotchis now earmarked for death, but Ronan’s mood has soured again. He feels aimless and aggressive, ready to brawl, ready to lie down somewhere dark and cease to exist. Maybe at the party he’ll perk up, or the one after that, or maybe he’ll just feel like this until he dies.

“Chin up, Lynch,” Kavinsky tells him when they’re back in the car. “You’re bringing me down. Did you want to invite them along or something, because shit, everyone’s _welcome_ but the honor roll’s never going to fucking show.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan says, sounding less snappy than he’d like, more human, more tired. “Drop me back at Aglionby, I need to get my shit.”

Kavinsky looks at him sideways, and for a moment there is an unsettling flash of concern, a feeling dangerously close to sincerity. Part of Ronan will always be nauseous when Kavinsky regards him kindly. But Kavinsky says, “Alright, sweetheart,” and the moment is hissed out through Ronan’s clenched teeth. They should be well past the point where Ronan can simply, stupidly pretend not to notice the way Kavinsky looks at him.

Ronan keeps pretending not to notice.

 

Ronan is unimpressed by the venue. Skov knew a guy who knew a local who knew an abandoned farmhouse, a place no one would miss, some rotting two storey eyesore out in the pastoral nowhere. He and Kavinsky do a lap together, kicking the interior walls to see if they’ll hold up, checking the rusty garbage in the back for flammability, inspecting the back stairs which they could use, but shouldn’t, and which neither of them are going to block off for their guests.

Inevitably, Ronan compares it to the Barns, and aches a little at how short it falls. If this is the closest he’s going to get to home these days, he hopes they blow the whole fucking roof off. His world has shrunk to the Aglionby dorms, the back of the Mitsu, Kavinsky’s arm around his shoulder, the always-hungry look in his eyes.

Even if Ronan lets himself be devoured, it wouldn’t be enough for either of them. Ronan knows this. Kavinsky disagrees.

The sun is beginning to set; a lazy half-circle of cars wraps the property, Kavinsky’s most loyal disciples in attendance. Ronan doesn’t remember if Kavinsky used to indulge them; these days he’s more single minded.

“Have you got your homework?” Kavinsky asks him.

The trunk of the BMW and the Mitsu are both loaded. Dream things glitter and shimmer and rustle and spark, packed into garbage bags and stuffed in together, bubble-wrapped at best, most of them fragile and volatile and waiting to erupt. These are their extracurriculars, where they pour the time that nothing else can fill.

It’s a surprising amount of tenacity from Kavinsky; Ronan’s attention span always falters first. But Kavinsky never just wants a party, he wants a _spectacle_ , and he shreds himself apart to dredge up enough wonders.

They have fake lights and fireworks, a thousand pretty baubles and chain-wrapped bats to smash them with. They have a bazooka, which Kavinsky props up outside, pointed suggestively at the ancient skeleton of a truck. They have every kind of liquor and a dozen brews of their own creation, hefty bottles left unwisely close to the bazooka. They have whatever felt fun in a half-lucid second, whatever seemed good for a moment’s distraction, whatever they want.

The primal part of Ronan thinks it looks like a _great_ time. Kavinsky is alight, halfway off the ground and humming. “This is going to be a fucking good one,” he tells Ronan, conspirator’s grin bone white and crooked.

People show up slowly. Most of the imports miss the turn off, or the road altogether, but the locals show up in packed pickup trucks, armed with cases of beer, shitty music pouring out of their shitty speakers. Kavinsky’s sound drowns them all out, the heavy and irregular beat an anxious kind of ambiance.

Ronan mostly prowls. He drinks the dream booze, but only the kind he brewed, which doesn’t get him drunk so much as it numbs him from the head down. The farmhouse doesn’t have any electricity, but he’s thrown a few lights in, brittle little kaleidoscopes that make everyone a shadow, a stranger, thrilled to see him but still too wary to touch. Outside there are shouts of delight and explosions, shards and sparks soaring past the broken windows.

Ronan wants very much to be outside and part of the chaos. Ronan wants very much to be in a different farmhouse, somewhere quiet and almost sacred, somewhere without puke on the floor and his family’s ghosts still flickering lonely and loving around the edges.

He goes outside to be part of the chaos.

Kavinsky is resplendent over the low flame of a shattered television. He’s got a retinue of boys who go to all his parties and know the score, who came dragging their own bags of things to burn. The fumes from their bonfire stir badly through the dream liquor haze in Ronan’s head, but he ignores it, picks up one of the glass baubles he brought along. There is a tiny crystal heart somewhere in the center, he remembers. They were all a little bit different; the dream place gave them up with a shudder and a sigh.

It cracks when he throws it into the fire, blackens from the inside out, glass to obsidian and then ashen shards. Ronan’s heart murmurs something, but he can’t tell what it says anymore.

In the mess, it’s stillness that catches his eye, the only boy in their desecrated field not moving or fighting or howling for blood. It is harder to recognise Adam out of uniform and without Gansey at his side, but it’s unmistakably him, wrapped up in a bubble of local boys who are clearly not impressing him as much as they think they are.

Ronan looks at Adam. Adam isn’t drinking, and isn’t laughing, and barely even watches when the bazooka is finally fired and the truck dies an ugly second death. But he looks at Ronan, and for a moment it’s the two of them, silent and static as the grass burns and the night burns and a laugh, high and manic, threads through space. Ronan is suddenly, acutely aware of how _much_ is happening around him. Someone jostles him from behind, an elbow clips his side, the speaker is still vibrating through the soles of his shoes, and there are glassy splinters studding his leather jacket and the skin of his neck.

Adam turns abruptly and walks away. Not back to the road, but further out into deserted fields, where the ground stretches untainted out into the dark. Ronan doesn’t hesitate before he follows.

The party releases him abruptly, light and noise dropping off as the grass rises up around his waist. The laughter chases Ronan the longest, that hollow note. Ronan thinks of the grin that goes with it and feels a little sick. There is a part of him that is always feeling a little sick, these days. He keeps his eyes on Adam Parrish’s shoulders and lets the sound thin to nothing in the distance.

The shapes of the farm’s outbuildings emerge from the night slowly, each one sloped and crumbling, just like the house. For a moment, Ronan is gripped by the thought of fixing them; peeling off the rotting boards, patching the roof, making something to stand proud and alone to rot anew.

Adam stops at the edge of one, leaning up against an empty doorframe, the space beyond it swallowed completely by shadow. He doesn’t seem upset to have been followed, but there’s surprise flitting around his features. “Lynch, right?” he asks, the uncertainty centered on the fact that it’s Ronan of all people who pursued him. Ronan considers what Adam might know of him, and the knowledge rubs backwards up his spine.

But he says, “Parrish,” and tries to sound cool, like this is not the boy he stares at when he is intermittently in class, like everyone should know who Adam is. Ronan thinks everyone _should_.

Adam doesn’t seem to know what to make of him. He looks both restless and exhausted, thin and faded t-shirt hanging off his wiry shoulders, impatience and condescension clearly simmering just beneath his skin. Ronan can’t take his eyes off him. “I just wanted to get a break,” Adam offers, tipping his head back across the field behind them to the distant delight of an exploding washing machine.

“Not your scene?” Ronan asks. He never figured out whether or not it was _his_ scene. He knows he would have noticed if Adam had ever drifted into Kavinsky’s orbit before, but he still says, “I didn’t think you came to parties like this.”

“A friend of a friend wanted to show me,” Adam shrugs again. There is something vulnerable about him, and in how visibly he’s edging away from the norm. Someone like Gansey might loathe Kavinsky’s little get-togethers because of the content, or the foul language, or the rampant substance abuse. Some kind of ethical objection. Adam seems to simply dislike rampant infernos, a hard stance to defend in a crowd like theirs.

Ronan reaches for words to express that he doesn’t care what Adam likes, and can’t find any that do not sound terrible. There’s a cool breeze and a reassuringly damp, woody sort of smell around them, and the silence while Ronan searches feels like the longest he’s had in a while without noise.

Adam looks back at the farmhouse behind them, the muted din, shapes of people shifting around the bonfire. Luminescent neon smoke is pouring out of the downstairs windows, a Lynch/Kavinsky collaboration that feels like it was completed years ago. Ronan and Adam are separate from time.

“Some of the things in there,” Adam starts, but doesn’t finish. The smoke dissipates into the grass, and Adam trails off watching it, brows furrowed in deep concern.

It’s petty and it’s inconsequential, but Ronan is desperate to know what Adam saw, what he liked, if any of his creations managed to make an impression. Kavinsky’s the one with the reputation, the infamous forger, the back alley legend. Ronan has never wanted attribution for any of his work before, but now he blurts it out clumsy, “Some of that shit’s mine. Made by me.”

Adam looks at him. It is not a particularly obliging kind of a look. He says, “Uh huh?” 

“Here, wait, I’ve got more,” Ronan says. He often dreams things that are not fit to be shown to Kavinsky, things he thinks he needs to hide, things that contain more of his soul than he’s comfortable seeing these days. There were things he made for the party that he thought would be pretty or thought would be fun, and that he couldn’t quite put out with the baubles when the moment came. There are shy miracles tucked into his jacket pockets, and he plucks one out gingerly, encouraged only by knowing that Adam is a very different audience to Kavinsky. “Want to see a star?”

It is a child’s idea of a star. A speck of furious light, not warm but faintly cool to the touch, like a chip of glass. There is no planet inside that beaming core, but it’s nearly too bright to look at. Held up to the sky between pinched fingers, it’s the same as any of its distant cousins.

Adam cups it in his hands, and looks at it, and looks at it, and rubs it with a scientific fingertip, and says nothing.

Ronan realizes all at once that this is where he wants to be; with the fire behind him, with open sky up above, with Adam Parrish and his heartbeat unsteady and feelings, real and raw and terrible flooding him once again. He’s gone too long without a risk like this, without a crack in the façade to let the least bit of light out.

The silence hangs between them. There is a fragile second spooling out over Ronan’s fingers, and he hates having to say the right thing because he never knows what that is. It feels like this is a chance to slip away to something better, something brighter, and this could be his _only_ chance. He doesn’t want to ruin it, but he feels the wrong words on the tip of his tongue, feels himself right on the cusp of a choice he won’t recover from.

The outbuildings shiver in the wind. Ronan understands that there’s nothing he needs to say.

“This is incredible,” Adam says at last. It sounds like _you’re incredible_ , and Ronan has spent six months without this taste in his mouth and it’s foreign, strange, makes him swallow too hard and think _maybe it’s not too late yet_.

It’s not that Adam is a gatekeeper or a lifeline, it’s that he’s got a star caged in his hands, light spilling out between his fingers, it’s that Ronan doesn’t think he’s inhaled properly for months, it’s that he’s there already, if he wants to be. Adam offers the star back; Ronan shakes his head, silently. It’s worthless lighting up his pocket lint; it’s worse in his hands, out in the open, exposed for derision.

“Thanks,” Adam says, soft, curling his hand closed around it. Ronan’s heart has not gotten this much use in a long time.

Adam splits off from him not long after, back home for an early start for the kind of job that Ronan never really realised existed. Ronan drifts between the party and the outbuildings, pinching dream lights to explore abandoned corners, drinking deep from imagined liquors, feeling eerily light like his bones suddenly weigh less in his body.

Kavinsky finds him at dawn, when more of their guests are horizontal than not, when Ronan’s brain is sloshing loosely in his skull. Kavinsky’s been grinning for hours, but it’s starting to sour around the edges; Ronan’s smile is stupid and content. Kavinsky seems delighted by it.

“This is going to be fucking hard to top,” Kavinsky tells him, collapsing beside him, wrapping an arm around Ronan’s waist like that’s a natural, comfortable thing to do. “But the next one. Next one we’ll come up with something un-be-fuckin- _lievable_.”

Ronan just nods, nothing left to say. Something soon is going to hurt, but something has been hurting for six months, a broken leg that’s badly set, and he thinks he will survive the new break and the mending.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I'd love to know what you think! You can come bother me on [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) too


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